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With my birthday approaching, I decide to host a dinner. Between parenthood and a pandemic, it’s been too long. I am about to invite a few friends, telling each of them who else is coming, when I’m stopped by something Larry David says. In an interview I’m listening to, the Curb Your Enthusiasm star complains about being invited to a dinner party where the host was insulted that he asked who else was going to be there.
For five years, I held a dinner party every week. I even wrote a book about dinner parties. So I thought this was settled law: I always told guests who else would be attending, partly to avoid conflicts and partly to assuage all too common social anxiety. But when I hear famous misanthrope David agreeing with me, it feels like a sign to re-evaluate that perspective.
Should a host tell guests who else is coming? Is it rude to ask? I poll friends and find no consensus.
A few take the position that asking to see the guest list is presumptuous and insulting to the hosting capabilities of the inviter. The common factor among this group is that they all like to host (including surprise guests or last-minute invitations) and all exhibit a high degree of social confidence.
Many more strongly feel, both as hosts and guests, that guest lists should be transparent in aid of alleviating said anxiety or avoiding conflicts with enemies. Even the nicest person I know admits that there are people she doesn’t want to end up sitting next to at a dinner table. But it’s mostly about anxiety. From moderate social discomfort to full-blown dread, many of us will not enter a room full of people without knowing who is inside.
Stumped, I approach Ann Elizabeth Burnett, an etiquette and leadership teacher in Surrey, B.C.
“It’s rude to ask who else is going. That’s quite inappropriate,” Burnett says unequivocally. “One doesn’t ask. Or one shouldn’t. It’s up to the host and hostess to decide who they’re going to invite to their home. One does usually keep their dinner party guest list a secret.”
When planning a dinner, Burnett says, a good host considers the compatibility of the guests, and how those personalities might lead to engaging conversation, while omitting social obstacles such as ex-spouses and boors. Yes, it is possible that a host will not know about the intricacies of private beefs, particularly if friends have been discreet about them. But that, according to Burnett, becomes the responsibility of guests: to act civilized.
Burnett is sympathetic to social anxiety and internal politics. However, she believes that the solution lies not in guest-list transparency, but in a phone call (she would not dream of e-mailing or texting any of this) to reassure any invitees with concerns.
“With our friends that have social anxiety, as a host, I have to be mindful of that,” Burnett says. “I might say, ‘I’ve just got 10 people coming, they’re all really lovely and you’ll get on well with them. Don’t worry.’ That’s what good manners, good etiquette and respect is all about – making people feel comfortable in your company.”
Though many might think of etiquette as an arcane set of rules for rules’ sake, it is merely a systematized approach to considering other people’s feelings. But whether we are revealing our guest list, or calling to soothe a guest’s worry, it strikes me now that both actions may be unintentionally feeding anxiety.
“If you are telling guests about the guest list to assuage their social anxiety, then absolutely, yes, you are providing certainty in order to give the anxiety what it needs,” Lynn Lyons tells me.
Lyons is a New Hampshire-based psychotherapist and co-host of Flusterclux, a podcast about helping children with anxiety. When we promise a child who is afraid of swim class that everything will be okay or describe exactly how swim class is going to go (neither of which we can control), we are, as she puts it, “doing the disorder,” which only reinforces it.
“Anxiety thanks you of your help in meeting its demands and promoting its ever-more popular approach to life,” she says. “Research shows that trigger warnings actually increase anticipatory anxiety, causing more distress. So telling socially anxious people the guest list will likely add to their anxiety, unless they choose to not attend at all – again giving the anxiety what it needs to grow more powerful.”
Lyons adds a tangential thought that helps me reframe the entire question, not as one of manners, but of what we expect a dinner party to be.
“Isn’t part of socializing and being a guest giving up the need to know how it will all play out?”
I think so. We’ve gotten used to a lack of surprise in our entertainment. Digital invitations include a full list of invitees; movie trailers reveal every plot detail but the third-act pivot. Perhaps this has trained us to depend on familiarity, making it harder to find delight in the relatively minor risk of an evening spent in the company of new, unfamiliar people.
“What happened to the excitement?” Burnett asks. “What happened to being approachable, friendly, looking forward to meeting new people, learning new things and perhaps expanding our social and business network? Don’t people go with an open mind any more?”
My practice of telling guests who else is coming and what we’re eating was formed by a great deal of hosting experience. But those weekly dinners were professional events dressed up as social occasions. They were interviews, with a recording device running. And while disclosing guest details may be a reasonable courtesy in a business setting, if I’m doing that for a private dinner with friends, perhaps I am merely feeding our cultural compulsion for the certainty of a paint-by-numbers social interaction.
For my impending dinner, I ask my wife, Victoria, whether she’ll invite a friend from work, one of the many interesting people I hear so much about but have never meet. Because I do like meeting new people. I do like the element of surprise.
Other than where and when dinner is, and confirming any food restrictions, that’s it. I don’t include more information. If anyone’s acceptance of dinner in my home is contingent on vetting my other friends or the menu, maybe that’s not who I want to spend an evening with.